Her beloved Max is off on a fishing trip, completely cut off from communication. Annie is certain she will stay out of trouble tending shop, selling mysteries in the heat of the summer. Keeping her promise to stay out of the sleuthing business should be no trouble at all, especially since Max has shut down Confidential Commissions after Annie’s near brush with death a few weeks earlier.

Except things always have a way of getting sticky in the hot island weather on Broward’s Rock. Like the best-selling author who returns to reveal all the real-life people behind the characters in his best-selling novel. Only, before he gets a chance, he ends up dead.

When Annie sees her friend Marian arguing with him earlier in the day of his death, she knows she’ll be a suspect. Surely Max would be helping Marian out if he were on the island. He wouldn’t stop Annie from helping Marian if he were right there, would he? So Annie jumps right into the sleuthing business once again to help her friend. Because someone has a secret to hide and they are willing to keep killing to never let it come to light.

Carolyn Hart was ready to retire the Death on Demand series and I would have mourned it. My heart would have ached like I had lost actual real-life friends! Sure, Max and Annie are borderline too perfect. They’re wealthy and beautiful people who have the world at their feet. But they are too likeable to begrudge them their perfection.

Plus they will do anything to help out their friends who seem to need a lot of it because they get accused of murder quite often. Broward’s Rock might sound idyllic, but it’s a hot bed of crime!

Hart’s books would be perfect reading for my Kindle app, but I always get them from the library. She constantly challenges my vocabulary. I need to keep a dictionary nearby so I stop poking the book, trying to get the definition of these obscure words to pop up for me!

This was a great read. I’m glad Annie and Max are hanging around for awhile longer. I also have a craving for a rum collins…